Condemning the heresies of the past is indeed the most difficult step in the transition from tyranny to democracy. In the 1950s, when I was deputy chief of the Romanian trade mission in West Germany, I witnessed how the Third Reich was demolished, and how the country became a Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) that made it the leading power in Europe. But not until 1998 was the Bundestag able to adopt a law canceling the sentences given to Claus von Stauffenberg, who had led a plot to assassinate Hitler, and to all other Germans who had, in one way or another, helped the Allies fight Nazism. Horst Heymann, the president of the Bundestag commission that initiated this law, apologized to the German people because their parliament had taken 50 years to arrive at that point. Now the Germans who fought Nazism are honored in the grandiose Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the country’s new museum of history.

Germany needed half a century to condemn Nazism, because that heresy was born in Germany and was rooted in her soil. Communism and its political police were not born in Romania. They were imported from the Soviet Union, and Romania should not wait for new generations to repudiate them.

It is now time for the Romanian president, prime minister and parliament to move from words to action, and to initiate a Heymann-style law that would rehabilitate—judicially and politically—the hundreds of thousands of anti-communists who are still sentenced in Romania, twenty years after the Soviet empire collapsed.

It is also time for Romania’s leaders and for her media to make a fundamental decision: What does “treason” really mean, and who is really a “traitor”?

As someone who witnessed the insanity of the Ceausescu regime after Mr. Pacepa defected, I can attest to the uncanny nightmare that was inflicted on the Romanian populace. This blog is not a sufficient forum to enter into all that detail, but, if you can imagine being raped of your dignity on every level, you would be not off the mark. Romanians were brave to remain and do what they could to preserve their integrity, and Romanians were brave to escape to salvage their integrity.

Today I see Romanians that have lived a full life for 20-25 years in Australia, Canada, America, Europe, etc. after escaping their Communist nightmare,and it breaks my heart a little. A despicable government made life so miserable that it drove its citizens to make excruciating decisions to escape their homeland and meld into another culture. For Romanians, it was too dangerous to tell anyone your plans to leave. You had to make your decision to leave your family, friends and country - alone.

America is a place of refuge, however, I often think: would I have thecourage and conviction that I witnessed in my Romanian friends? Or, would I just get along and survive? Would I make a stand at the risk of imprisonment or worse if America turned against her ideals that I have held so fiercely all my life? Could I make a decision to leave my homeland believing that I would be branded its enemy and never be able to return? I hope I could but I am not certain.

And now here we are. After all the turmoil of those terrible Communist decades, and all the blood shed and sacrifices expended, those Romanians that did have the courage and conviction to make a stand against their Communist masters are still being punished? Didn't Ceausescu and his evil empire die 24 years ago? There is no profit for the Romanian government to continue to uphold these type of death sentences on Romanians whose transgressions were to refuse to commit Communist crimes in the name of an evil government hellbent on total submission of its people. This type of justice appears to be implemented by old vendettas, not by rule of law in an emerging democracy.

You know, the best and worst of your revelations is that they are necessary. They shouldn't be necessary. Escapees from all of the communist horror states have always been right under the noses of our news media people in NYC.

And Cuba is still right there. Right under our noses as are the Cuban escapees ready to tell their stories.